Problem of Criminal Prosecution, Corruption and Misconduct by the Injured Person

Abstract

The Procedures for Corruption and Misconduct Act B.E.2559 (2016) stipulates the right for the injured person to become the plaintiff to sue the fraud and misconduct directly to the court, without the necessity to pass any examination from any government agency responsible for preventing and opposing the corruption. This article therefore is a study of the concept of criminal proceedings, concept of determining the offenses against government officials, victimization, legal morality and prosecution for corruption and misconduct in Thailand. The study shows determination the right of the injured person to be able to file a lawsuit for corruption and misconduct directly to the court is contrary to legal morality, which is a creation of a parallel organization with a government organization with the power and duty to investigate and prosecute government officials. No investigation and screening of allegations of government officials were conducted prior to filing the case to court, which leads to delays in sentencing, not in accordance with the objectives and purposes of the establishment of a criminal court for corruption and misconduct. According to the statistics of lawsuits filed to the Central Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases and the Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct, Region 1 - 9, victims have mostly sued in cases of fraud and misconduct between 2016 – 2019, with the total prosecution of 2,166 cases, accounting for 47.17 percent of the volume of cases entered into the court's consideration, which causes problems due to criminal prosecution, corruption, and misconduct by the victim, also the problem of determining the victim's damage, problems in prosecution without knowledge of fraud and misconduct behavior, problems of disloyal prosecution, problems in filing lawsuits against the spirit of the law and the problem of prosecution without an investigation of facts, affecting the government officials and the national administration.